Everyone’s Complain Department

The ‘Everyone’s Complaint Department’ series of comic strips began as random doodles and reflection pieces of Alvin Teoh, ECD of Naga DDB Tribal. These little stories featured in MARKETING magazine were originally posted on Facebook and are an ongoing tribute to life in Adland.
The comic depicts Alvin’s early days in the advertising industry and words from the Executive Creative Director(ECD) himself.

I was losing my temper three times a day on average. I was a junior art director that perhaps thought the universe revolved around me. I was incredibly passionate about my work and had trouble understanding why it was seldom sold. So the only reaction to rejected work was to destroy chairs, tables, cubical walls and take it out on Account Management.”
Therein lies the problem: it was all about my ideas. And that was both naive and arrogant. Well, things changed pretty quickly. After the early years of living in a self-delusional bubble of self-adoration, I had to go sell my own shit and as a Junior Art Director, I had to face Directors of Marketing and CEOs.
I was torn to bits as they took my ego and wiped their asses with it. You can say it was a life-changing experience, haha. And these sorts of experiences were among the best ones in my career.
So after having humble pie shoved forcefully into the pit of my belly, I quickly learned a new lesson: definitely, your creative ideas are basically shit if it doesn’t solve a problem that matters to the client.
Did you enjoy reading this? Well, we have more here!

TIME TO ENTER APPIES

The APPIES is an annual event that presents a rare opportunity for creative, media, digital and marketing agencies or brands to present their best campaigns to the industry.

This is the only event where Live Presentations meets Live Judging.

Similar to TED Talks, The APPIES is the chance for great presenters with outstanding work to show it off to some of the industry’s most important industry leaders.

This year’s winners will receive Gold, Silver or Bronze trophies for 21 categories, and 6 special Best of Best categories (red trophies) that require no submissions!

Campaign entries must have run between June 2024 to May 2025

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY

MARKETING Magazine is not responsible for the content of external sites.


Subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates in the marketing and advertising scene